Deutsch
By Andreas Maierhofer
The taste of cold beer lies in the warm air of summer evenings, unobtrusively joined by a mixture of cigarette smoke, sweat and at times mild despair and the Südtirolerplatz remains illuminated by the glow from the House of Architecture until late at night. It's Summer School in Graz.
But scrolling back six months ago: February 2018, Ljubljana, Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Future Architecture Conference. A team from the House of Architecture in Graz listens and networks, together with six Summer School assistants, through lectures and after-parties for three days from and with various young architectural firms from all over the world, which have followed the call for ideas of the Future Architecture Platform. Ten of these aspiring architects are invited, along with 25 students from nine different European countries, to architecturally work on five peripheral districts of the city of Graz. Five heterogeneous groups are created, by the collaboration of two architects from two different offices each as course instructors, as well as the intermingling of local and international students. That enables completely new potentials and new, sometimes even radical ideas.
Work-life balance: two weeks "all inclusive"
With arrival on Sunday, August 26th, for the so diverse group of 25 students – coming from Portugal, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, Ukraine, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belarus and Moldova – will begin two weeks that are not just about work. Fresh coffee, cake and fruits in the mornings, having lunch together, collective shoptalk with beer, wine or iced tea in the evening, to continue working on the project until the wee hours. A weekend in between is dedicated entirely to the architectural shutdown and at the same time to get to know Graz and its surrounding area. Life beyond the summer school "family" seems far away, almost unimaginable. Dedication, enthusiasm and heartbreaks of students and tutors are undoubtedly reflected in the projects, which despite the shortage of time are worked out in great detail and with great care.
About writing machines, playful surrealism and utopian nostalgia
The title "Desperate Houselives – Ideas for peri-urban areas" leads the five groups consisting of tutors, their assistants (local students) and four other guest students each group trying to find architectural solutions for five selected suburbs of Graz. If you are looking for solutions, you have to find the problem first: How can Liebenau, Gösting, Wetzelsdorf, Straßgang and Puntigam be upgraded and improved architecturally and socially? Thus, according to the high diversity of the individual participants, five completely different but in their form coherent proposals for the suburbs of Graz are developed by very different approaches.
In addition to classical site inspections or conversations with residents, there is also the surrealist approach of the "Found Object" in the team Straßgang – led by Lera Samovich from fala atelier, Benedict Esche from Kollektiv A and Elena Karpilova from the Architectural Thinking School for Children. The group deals with very simple, trivial everyday objects – found in the district – and uses them as an aesthetic approach for the development of their architectural intervention. "Exquisite Corpse" shows a collection of newly created architectural objects that bring a hint of Postmodernism to the street.
"Imprinting Identity" in turn brings a building type to Liebenau, which already worked in Bologna in 1345: the portico. Regardless of function and location, the portico functions as an infinitely adaptable module to form the obviously missing public and communication spaces in the district. For direct communication, the team around Elena Chiavi and Francisco Moura Veiga from CARTHA and Francisco Fonseca from SKREI develop a mobile printing machine for temporary "street news".
"In Gösting everything is good as it is", however public space is missing and the nature limiting the district – on the one hand the river Mur and on the other hand the forest on the hills of Plabutsch – represents the biggest attraction. So the team of Ibai Rigby from Parallel Sprawl designs true to the motto "Go b(r)i(d)g(e) or go home!", three linear megastructures in the form of do-it-yourself bridges. The modules of the "Public Shelf" are to create space for all those social functions that until then are not possible or available in Gösting. At the same time, it can be a "machine" for the production of food and electricity as well as functioning as a natural corridor for all inhabitants of Gösting.
Acupuncturally works the group around Therese Leick from TAB Collective and Akil Scafe-Smith from RESOLVE, which has adopted Wetzelsdorf. "Gestures" are a series of architectural gestures or interventions that are not prescriptive and binding, but rather suggestive and exemplary. In addition to the reinterpretation of existing spaces and the revitalization of apparent leftover areas supposedly arbitrarily placed structural interventions should help the district to gain new charm.
"Can you imagine?" – a question often asked by the team of Stefano Tornierei from Babau Bureau and Samuele Squassabia and Tao Baerlocher from Studiospazio during the two weeks of summer school. "Infraçade" is the answer. A public space where pedestrians and cyclists can move around independently and riskless on different levels beside the existing infrastructure. A façade grid that can be easily attached to any form of building that lines it and can also generate energy as a engine. Similar to the "public shelf", the project evokes memories of utopian dreams of the 1960s.
At the end of two weeks of hard work, few sleep, but a lot of fun and above all learning effect for all participants, a beautiful exhibition can be opened, which is almost more multifaceted than their designers or the worked districts. Hello, Future Architecture – the prospect is good!
All projects in detail and more about the Future Architecture Summer School 2018 can be found in the accompanying booklet, available for download on the website. Numerous photos give an insight into the intensive two weeks.
